Because we have become accustomed to viewing conventional sporting events on television or listening to the play-by-play narration of such events on a radio, it should not be surprising that there is substantial interest in achieving a similar type of spectator experience in regard to online games and other types of events. Most online electronic games cannot normally be viewed by a spectator attending the competition, because the competition is usually between players participating at diverse geographic locations. Also, instead of being assembled to play in person, the participants typically interact within the virtual environment of a game, as the game is played over the Internet or other network. Thus, to follow the action in an online electronic game or other online event that is not attended in person, it might instead be preferable to use a personal computer (PC), gaming device, or other electronic communication device, to view and/or listen to the game action as the game progresses.
The prior art has attempted to enable game spectators to view online electronic games in progress, but there are several problems with the solutions that were previously developed. As shown by a block diagram 400 in FIG. 4, one prior art approach, which is used by games such as Quake 3 Arena™, and MechWarrior™, employs a game server 402 to both host the game being played and provide a data stream to spectators, enabling them to follow the game action. In FIG. 4, a plurality of participants are represented by way of example, by a participant 404a and a participant 404b, and the PCs used by these participants to play the game are coupled in communication over the Internet (or other network) with game server 402. In addition, a plurality of spectators are coupled to game server 402, as represented, for example, by a participant 406a and a participant 406b. Each of the participants and the spectators must use a computing device (e.g., a PC) that is compatible for executing the game software for the game hosted by the game server. A more significant drawback is that the game server can only support a limited number of spectators, since the spectator connection to the game server requires that the server allocate computing resources, such as connections, memory state updates, etc., for providing the game state data stream to the spectators. Adding more than a few spectators will adversely impact on the game server's ability to both effectively host the game being played by the participants and its ability to provide a data stream for the game to the spectators.
A prior art solution that partially addresses the problems of this previous approach is shown in a block diagram 408 in FIG. 5. In this approach, which is used by online games such as Quake TV™, game server 402 hosts the game being played by the participants, but need only provide a single data stream of the game state to a spectator relay 410. The spectator relay then provides each spectator with a corresponding data stream of the game state. Many more spectators can thus be served by the spectator relay, because it need only serve the data stream and does not host the game played by the participants. However, it is again necessary for each spectator to execute the game being played by the participants on the spectators' computing devices or game consoles in order to render the action occurring in the game.
One other prior art approach is worthy of mention, although it apparently has not been commercially developed or publicly deployed. As shown in a block diagram 412 in FIG. 6, this employs game server 402 to host the game being played by the participants and to provide a data stream of game state to a primary spectator 416. The PC used by the primary spectator then employs video capture hardware 414 (such as a video capture computer card—(not shown)) to capture video of the game state as received by the primary spectator. The game state is captured as a raw video data file. This raw video data file can then be transferred over the Internet or other network to other spectators, such as a spectator 406b, for display on those spectators' computing devices or gaming devices. However, a significant drawback arises because the video capture hardware only produces the raw video file that corresponds to the video that the primary spectator 416 saw on the primary spectator's monitor. Also, there is no convenient way to edit or augment the video data in the raw video file transferred to other spectators, such as spectator 406b. 
There are other aspects that should be addressed in providing a better solution of this problem. One advantage of watching an actual sporting event being televised or broadcast over the radio is the additional entertainment and information provided by the narrators' commentary regarding the game and/or the participants. Radio depends solely on the narrative commentary to describe the action and to provide further entertainment value by enriching the experience of the listener. Electronic games sometimes include a virtaul host that adds narrative to the game action, but only for the participants. For example, in Microsoft Corporation's Links™ golf game, the play can optionally be accompanied by appropriate narrative commentary that is audible to the participants. Like the commentary enjoyed by spectators of conventional broadcasts, it would be desirable to provide appropriate narrative commentary to the spectators of online games. For spectators using a cell phone or other audio-only electronic device, in order to follow the action in an electronic game, audio commentary may be the only practical way to follow what is happening in the game, since the bandwidth over a cell network for graphic visual content relating to a game may be inadequate to provide a rich experience. Indeed, it is clearly important to be able to supply data streams with different forms of content and format for a variety of different types of computing devices and other electronic devices used by the spectators, and to enable such devices to provide a spectator function for online games without requiring the devices to actually execute a software copy of the game.
Furthermore, it would be desirable to provide other types of data or information to spectators that are currently not provided to spectators of online games. For example, the spectators would benefit from being able to selectively view the game action from different viewpoints, using software that is included as metadata and which responds to the input from spectators to control the viewpoint. In addition to the data that reports the current state of a game, the spectator data should also include metadata providing other functions, such as an explanation of the game rules when a play relating to details of the rules has occurred, or stats for the participants in the game. A further desirable feature in some games would enable spectators to monitor participants' text and voice chat sessions during a game. Parents of younger children, or others, may also desire that expletives voiced during game play by the participants be blanked or bleeped so that they are not heard.
Another important consideration is that the spectators must be prevented from providing any assistance to participants by making any “out of channel” communications, e.g., over a telephone. For example, if the spectators are shown the cards held by participants in a card game, it should not be possible for a spectator to affect game play by calling one of the participants to provide that information before the play of the hand has been completed. Accordingly, it would be desirable to delay the data stream for a game sufficiently long to prevent such undesired interaction between spectators and participants.